19
Travis hadn’t been the only one to recognize the voice. As soon as he looked at Nish and saw his beet-red, sweating face, he knew that Nish, too, had realized instantly who was beneath the balaclava.
Big.
Nish took it particularly badly. Not just because the lead terrorist turned out to be his great friend, but because his ambitious plan to moon the entire world had gone up in smoke.
Travis could tell that Nish was struggling with what to do. There was little choice, however.
“We better show this to somebody,” Travis said.
Nish nodded helplessly.
Travis led the little group down to Mr. Dillinger’s room. Mr. Dillinger called in Muck while the Owls explained the situation. Fahd then played the recording for them both.
Mr. Dillinger called the police. A detective came and heard the story and, once again, Fahd played the recording. The police demanded that the Screech Owls take them to this man called Big, and Nish sadly led the way to the underground garage where he had last met with his great friend.
Travis was astonished at how quickly the police moved. In no time, with the Owls well out of the way, they had gathered up Big and his buddies and hauled them off to be charged.
“What for?” Nish asked.
The detective in charge looked at him as if it were one of the stupidest questions he had ever heard. “Uttering terrorist threats,” he said. “In this country, that’s right up there with murder.”
One of Big’s friends had broken immediately and explained the story.
It was all Big’s idea. He’d got it when Nish had invited Big over to the hotel room to tell him about his great scheme to moon the world. Big had even been shown the file of Nish mooning before the camera.
Big was smarter than Travis had imagined. He had figured out that if he could just replace the “Moonshot” file on the computer with another one, then instead of Nish’s big butt on the screen at Times Square the New Year’s crowd would see his own recording.
“This man claims there was no real terrorist threat,” the detective said. “The guy they all call Big figured that they could panic the crowd who’d come down to see the show. With everyone running for cover, and with the snowstorm still blowing, they’d paralyze the city and empty the downtown core, leaving them free to loot wherever they wanted – even along Fifth Avenue.
“They filmed their own recording and saved it on disk. It took them less than five minutes to break into the hotel room, replace your file with theirs, and give it the same name. That way, you would load their file thinking it was yours. It was pretty ingenious – and it might have worked if you hadn’t checked it out first.”
“So it was them who hit Muck!” Sarah said.
The detective nodded. “There’s also going to be assault charges,” he said. “These guys are in deep trouble, believe me.”
“But–but–but,” Nish began, “what happened to my file?”
“It’s gone,” the detective said. “Outer space, I guess. But count yourself lucky, son.”
“W–why’s that?”
“If your file had gone up on that screen, I might be here charging you instead.”
Nish stuck out his chin, challenging. “No way you’d have recognized me.”
The policeman blew out his cheeks and shook his head. “We’d have checked every butt in New York,” he said. “A butt like that is pretty distinctive, wouldn’t you say?” He pointed at Nish’s rear end.
Nish blazed red – for once speechless.
20
New Year’s Eve in Times Square was wonderful. The snow stopped falling, the ploughs came out and cleared off the main streets, and downtown New York filled with hundreds of thousands of New Year’s revellers. The noise was deafening, the countdown and the fireworks spectacular. The broadcast went off without a hitch. No terrorist threats. No bare bum.
Nish was shattered. He walked around with his hands deep in his pockets and his face so sad you’d think his life was coming to an end. When the great ball dropped and the New Year arrived, he would have nothing to do with noisemakers. He wouldn’t dance. He wouldn’t cheer. He wouldn’t look at the big screen.
“My one chance to make the Guinness Book of World Records,” he kept muttering. “And I blew it.”
“Get into the spirit, Rolex Boy,” Sarah told him. “It’s a whole new year – anything can happen.”
“Nothin’ that good,” Nish said despondently. “That was the single greatest idea I ever had in my life. It’s all downhill from here for me.”
Sarah spun her finger by her temple and rolled her eyes at Travis. Travis shrugged. Nish was just being Nish. By tomorrow he’d have forgotten all about it and have a brand-new idea.
“Better get to bed,” Mr. Dillinger said as he came up behind them. “We’re on at noon tomorrow. Madison Square Garden. Championship game.”
“Who are we playing?” asked Derek.
“The Detroit Wheels,” Mr. Dillinger said. “We came first, they were right behind us in the standings.”
“The Wheels?” Nish asked. “Was that the team I scored the winner against?”
Mr. Dillinger frowned and looked over his glasses at Nish. How could he have forgotten? But Travis knew Nish hadn’t forgotten for a second. He just wanted to remind everyone he had scored the winner.
Nish was back in the real world.
21
Everything had changed. No one was talking any more about hacking into a broadcast. Nish wasn’t going on about his butt or the Guinness Book of World Records. He was, instead, sitting fully dressed in the visitors’ dressing room of Madison Square Garden, his head resting on his shin pads, deep in concentration. He hadn’t even bothered to check out the photographs in the hallway. He had come to do one thing – play hockey.
“You know what you need to do,” Muck said just before he opened the door that led to the ice surface. “Go to it.”
Travis smiled to himself as he strapped on his helmet. For Muck, that almost amounted to a major speech. Nothing about how far they’d come together, nothing about armies fighting glorious battles, no fancy quotes that no one could understand – just good old Muck, telling them to get out there and “Go to it.”
They headed onto the ice, Jeremy first, spinning at the blueline so he skated backwards into the net, where he immediately began scraping the ice so he could rough up his crease. He seemed oblivious to his surroundings. How Jeremy could fail to notice there were several thousand people in the stands, Travis didn’t know.
Travis skated around on the new ice, feeling his legs. Sarah was up ahead, gliding smoothly as she took her turn around the back of the net. Nish was pounding Jeremy’s pads like they were some horrible animal that had to be killed before the game could begin. Everything was in order for the Screech Owls. Travis even hit the crossbar during warm-up. He felt great. He knew that this game, this championship match in the Big Apple International Peewee Tournament, was going to be a great one.
The people had come out of curiosity. The snowstorm was over, and the downtown streets were slowly returning to normal, but the people of New York were still essentially stranded in their city. There was little else to do but go for a walk, ski in the park, or find something like a minor-hockey tournament to take in. Madison Square Garden had opened its doors and was charging nothing. This and the television coverage the various teams had been given during the storm combined to bring thousands out to see the final match.
Muck was right. There was nothing he needed to say about the Wheels. They were big, and seemingly older than the Owls. They had great shots, and could score goals. The two teams were almost perfectly matched, with the Screech Owls’ speed and skill at playmaking roughly equalled by the Wheels’ strength and shots. The two teams had already played once to sudden-death overtime. It was going to be a great final.
Sarah’s line started, with Nish and Fahd back on defence. Sarah took the opening faceoff easily and sent Dmitri flying d
own the wing so fast he caught a slow Detroit defender off guard, set him back on his heels, and tore past him for a quick snap shot that ticked off the post – and then off the glass.
It might have been 1–0 for the Owls but for a fraction of an inch. The puck bounced off the glass, jumped over Nish’s stick as he pinched in, and immediately the Wheels were off on a two-on-one with only Fahd back.
Travis knew what he had to do. Sarah and Dmitri were both caught up-ice. He was behind the play, but he had the angle on the puck carrier and had better speed. He dug down so hard he felt his lungs burn with the effort. He tucked low to the ice and tried to flick his ankles with every push off, anything for more speed.
The two Wheels were over the blueline with Fahd between them. Travis noticed the puck carrier look for his partner.
Travis gambled that he would pass.
Jumping with one final push, Travis flew through the air and landed flat on his chest, with his stick held out in front of him in one hand.
The pass was already on the way, hard and perfectly aimed at the tape of the second Wheel, who pulled his stick back to one-time it.
Travis reached as far as he could, his arm seeming almost to unhinge. He felt the puck just tick the toe of his stick blade, then heard the whistle as the puck flew over the boards and out of play. He kept sliding, right through the circle and into the boards.
The other Owls on the ice raced to him as if he’d scored.
“Great play, Trav!” Sarah called.
“You saved a goal!” Fahd shouted.
Nish said nothing. But when Travis got to his knees, he felt a quick, light tap on the seat of his hockey pants. His old friend, being grateful.
The game surged end to end, with great attacks and even greater defensive plays. Sam blocked a shot from the slot that would have gone in had she not thrown herself in front of it. Nish broke up rush after rush. Andy checked the top Detroit centre to a standstill. Jeremy was brilliant, making glove saves and pad saves, dropping down into the butterfly to prevent wraparounds, and once stopping a hard shot from the point with his mask, a shot so hard it ripped the mask clean off.
At the other end, Travis hit the crossbar – only this time it didn’t make him smile. The Wheels goalie stopped Dmitri on a clean break and stopped Wilson on a great pinch from the point.
“It’s coming,” Muck said at the first break. “It’s coming.”
In the second period, both teams scored early, the Wheels on a lucky tip that went off Wilson’s skate, the Owls when Mario picked up one of his specialties, a garbage goal, after Nish had sent a hard drive into the crease and the goaltender let the rebound slip away.
Sarah scored on a pretty play where she slipped the puck through a Detroit defender’s feet and then pulled out the goalie. The Wheels came back on a breakaway when Fahd let his man beat him to the outside. Derek scored on a hard blast from the top of the circle. The Wheels scored on the power play after Andy had been sent off for tripping.
It was a tie game, Wheels 3, Owls 3, with one period left to play.
They flooded the ice between the second and third periods, and the Owls returned to their dressing room to wait. Nish threw a towel over his head and hid his face beneath it. He was fully concentrating now.
Travis was glad Nish hadn’t noticed the camera crew walking through the crowd and shooting the action on the ice. He knew if Nish saw a TV camera, he’d become a different player from the one they so desperately needed right now.
Muck and Mr. Dillinger came into the room, Muck holding a single sheet of paper in both hands, low, and staring at it as if he could not quite believe what he was reading.
“Different rules for the championship game,” Muck announced. “Five minutes of sudden-death overtime if it’s still tied after three. Then a shootout. You know what I think about shootouts.”
Muck hated them. Hockey, he always said, was a team game, not an exhibition of individual skills. But then, he didn’t like the designated hitter in baseball, either. The Owls, on the other hand, dreamed of shootouts, and the glory that would come from scoring a spectacular goal.
Late in the third, Muck’s fears looked as if they might be coming true. The Owls had scored on a lucky tip by Simon Milliken, but the Wheels had tied it 4–4 on another power play.
Travis could sense the game slowing. He had to admit, Muck had a point. If teams knew there would be a shootout, they tended to play for the shootout, counting on their best players to win it when no one was checking them.
Travis had never been checked so tightly. It was almost as if another player was inside his sweater with him, pulling him here and pushing him there. Every time he tried to escape into open ice, he felt an arm across his chest, a hook inside his elbow, a stick between his legs.
It was the same for everyone. Sarah couldn’t find the space she needed for plays, Dmitri couldn’t find the open ice he needed for his speed.
The Wheels checked frantically, but when they had the puck, they made no effort to carry it up-ice towards the Screech Owls’ goal. Instead, they dumped it deep into the Owls’ end – forcing Jeremy to leave his net to play it – then ran for the bench and a change rather than chase the puck in and try to cause a turnover.
They were in the dying minutes of a championship, and Travis had never seen the game played so methodically, so predictably. Muck was right about shootouts.
The buzzer sounded to signal the end of regulation time, and the players gathered at the bench, Nish flicking the cap off a water bottle and dumping it all down the back of his neck. They were exhausted, and now they had to face five minutes of sudden-death hockey. There would be no flood. They would play the five minutes on the same ice surface, rutted and snowy, very much to the advantage of the slower, larger Detroit team.
“Try to end it early,” Muck said to Sarah’s line. “I don’t want us in a shootout.”
Sarah won the faceoff, but the Detroit centre all but tackled her when she tried for the loose puck. Travis found himself wrestling with the opposite winger and couldn’t get to it either. Sarah tried to slip around her check and was pitchforked over, crashing and sliding towards the far boards.
Travis caught Sarah’s expression as she turned. She was staring icicles at the referee, but the ref, who had been standing right beside the two centres when the big Detroit player had dumped her, was acting as if nothing at all had happened.
If Muck hated shootouts, Travis hated officials who treated third periods and overtimes as if they were different from the rest of the game.
“I can’t move out there!” Sarah said when they came off.
“I know,” Travis said. “It’s crazy.”
Travis felt a knock on the side of his shin pad. It was Nish, reaching for him down the bench with his stick.
“If I get a chance,” Nish said, his face soaked with sweat and beaming red, “I’m carrying. You cover.”
Travis nodded.
Next shift Sarah tried a new tactic. Instead of going for the puck as usual, she ignored it and took out the big Detroit centre, very nearly pitchforking him back as she used her strength to leverage him off the puck.
Holding off the centre with her back, Sarah kicked the puck towards Travis, who darted in under his own check to sweep it away and against the boards.
Finally, a little space!
Travis turned, picked up the puck, and headed for the back of the Owls’ net. The far winger was coming hard at him, and Travis faked a shot against the boards and simply left the puck behind the net, throwing his shoulder into the checker and sending him off balance out into the slot area.
Nish was there to pick up the drop. He stickhandled easily, checking both sides.
Sarah cut straight across the ice towards the middle. Two Wheels stuck to her, both hooking.
Nish held, and when the free Detroit forward came at him, he tapped it off the back of the net so it bounced right back to him as the checker flew by.
Nish had the open left side,
and took it. He moved up-ice quickly. Travis bumped the player closest to him to give Nish more room, and Sarah, the cleanest player on the team, used her stick to hold back the big Detroit centre.
Nish kept over the Wheels’ blueline. Travis remembered what he had been told – “You cover!” – and dropped back into Nish’s spot to be in position to defend against any turnover.
Nish faked a pass to Dmitri and still held. There was no lane to the net. He stayed along the boards and stopped abruptly as a Detroit defenceman came in hard with his shoulder. The checker missed, crashed into the boards and crumpled to the ice.
Nish was still looking to pass. The big centre had Sarah tied up. Dmitri was stapled to the far boards by an interfering backchecker. Travis was back, just outside the blueline to cover a quick break the other way, so Nish couldn’t risk a pass to him that might go offside. Fahd was on the far side, but a cross-ice pass would be too risky.
Nish worked back of the Wheels’ net, stickhandling easily as he tried to read the situation.
Everywhere he looked, Screech Owls players were tied up. He, however, was free; the player who’d slammed into the boards was still trying to pick up his stick with his big, clumsy gloves on.
Travis could not believe what he was seeing. It was almost as if he saw it all happen even before Nish pulled back the puck so it flipped up onto the blade of his stick.
He’s not!
But he was. The puck cradled flat on his blade, Nish casually tossed it high so that it sailed over the top of the net like a golf ball lobbed out of a sand trap.
With no one on him, Nish furiously moved his legs so he came spinning around the front of the net just as the puck landed, flat, in the slot. He was still unchecked, the player who’d lost his stick only now diving, stick in hand, in the hopes of blocking the shot.
He was too late. Nish picked the top corner, blew it over the goaltender’s glove, and punched the water bottle so hard off the back of the net it hit the glass and sprayed all over it, right in front of the goal judge.
The Complete Screech Owls, Volume 4 Page 8
